Renewing the Social Dimension of the Sacred Heart By Rev. Peter Nguyen, S.J., Ph.D./S.T.D. Introduction The 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus Father Pedro Arrupe judged the Sacred Heart devotion to be “fundamental” to the spirituality of the Society of Jesus because the devotion helped Jesuits to come to know and love Christ so that they can bring Christ’s love to all humanity. 1 Nevertheless, Arrupe recognizes that Catholics have come to regard the devotion to be plagued by excessive individualism and subjectivism, removed from the world’s concerns. 2 In addition, the British author, Karen Armstrong, in her best-selling book A History of God, criticizes the devotion of the Sacred Heart. She writes: “Concentrating solely on Jesus, the man, such a piety is simply a projection which imprisons the Christian in a neurotic egotism.” 3 Expressing a common sentiment, she argues that the Sacred Heart is mawkish and sentimental, which distorts the prophetic Gospel depiction of Jesus. When coupled with Fr. Arrupe’s concern, Armstrong’s excoriating critique of the devotion indicates that the devotion tends toward excessively individualistic piety with no regard for the community’s role in worship and social justice. So, is the Sacred Heart devotion irrelevant in a Church desperate to be relevant? Can we renew the devotion as Arrupe had hoped? Has the contemporary Western person lost the capacity to see the heart as the symbolic physical seat of the soul? Georgetown’s Theresa Sanders does not believe that this devotion should wither due to its importance in shaping the Church’s saints and mystics. She argues for updating the devotion of the Sacred Heart by drawing on the contemporary theologies of Karl Rahner and Jon Sobrino to develop a concern for the poor and social justice. 4 I, too, believe in the importance of the devotion because it offers a popular Christology that integrates theology and spirituality—a theology that helps bring people in the pews into a transformative living mystery. They come to know and love Christ and the whole mystical Body of Christ, especially the poor and suffering. My thesis is that the devotion to the Heart of Jesus offers transformative charity, calling forth the human person in prayer to return to himself from a fallen world that has alienated him from others and his authentic self; renews the person in the image of Christ; and incorporates him in the Mystical Body of Christ. When these three movements—conversation, conversion, and incorporation—are forged into a unity, they reveal the social dimension of the theology of the Heart of Jesus. The parameters of this essay require specifically-focused texts in the face of considerable primary and secondary literature on the Heart of Jesus. To discuss the renewal of the social transformation in the Sacred Heart devotion, I do a limited but concentrated excavation, exploring the spiritual testimony of the second director of the Apostleship of Prayer, Henri Ramière, SJ (1821-1884), who writes of the power of association of men and women in prayer in union with the Heart of Jesus to transform society in his book, The Apostleship of Prayer (1859). 5 I conclude with a brief exposition of Pope Francis’ statements on the devotion, highlighting his desire that the devotion help incorporate persons on the margins into the Mystical Body of Christ. This paper consists of three parts. The first part of this paper details the methodological approach. It offers a grammar of the devotion, entering into conversation with Balthasar’s theology to provide a theological framework to discuss the Sacred Heart devotion, seeking to establish a theological foundation with a Christological center animated by the Holy Spirit in prayer. In light
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